SINCE GAZA IS SO MUCH IN THE NEWS THESE DAYS…
Back in Biblical days Gaza figured into quite a few stories. First, there was Caleb and Josua who scoped out the would be promised land before the Hebrews conquered Palestine. One of the places they sighted was Gaza, which the Hebrews eventually captured. Then, years later, in 2nd Samuel 18, Samson showed up and “smote” the Philistines at Gaza. Then there was the infamous story of Samson and Deliah in Judges 16. The Philistines did Samson in at Gaza.
After many years Jeremiah laments that Gaza’s hair was “shorn”. The prophet Amos prophesized that Gaza would be burnt down (Amos chapter one). The prophets Zacariah I (chapter 9) and Zephaniah (chapter two) both prophesy Israel’s dramatic fall. All of these prophesies came to pass in ancient times when the Romans finally sacked Jerusalem and all its surrounding outlying cities on their way out. The whole land lay desolate for decades until gradually inhabited by Arab tribal peoples during the Middle Ages.
When the Jewish people who were left over from the Nazi massacres were granted permission by the United Nations after WWII (1948) to reenter and rebuild their promised land, they came by the thousands from all over Europe to settle in Palestine. There is just one reference to Gaza in the New Testament, in Acts 8:26 in the story is told of Phillip one of the early disciples who encountered an Ethiopian Eunuch whom he sought to convert to the faith of the Apostles. Philip was on the road that led from Gaza to Jerusalem. So, we can see that when we are studying about Gaza, we are not only studying ancient Biblical history, but we are also studying about this ancient city of Jesus’ time.
So, here we are today trying to make sense of all that’s going on in what we used to call “The Middle East” and we find that it has a history that extends all the way back to Moses’ time. Today there are millions of Palestinians jammed into the tiny area of contemporary Gaza and their lives now destroyed by the Israeli troops. This place has existed in our Western history for many thousands of years and today it still finds its way into the center of world history. In the Book of Joshua, the Hebrew people are said to have driven out all the people who already lived in the “promised land”, without their permission, and given their land over to the various tribes of Israel. As it says in the Book of Joshua: “Ashdod, with its villages and hamlets, Gaza with its villages and hamlets as far as the torrent of Egypt and the Great Sea and the land adjacent” (Joshua 15:47).
Since “taking over” the land, and I use the words ‘taking over’ literally, the Jewish people have, over the years since 1948, essentially forced the Arab people living there into a nomadic existence. When I visited in 1966 many if not most were living behind fences reminiscent of those, they themselves were put behind by the Nazis. The Jewish people have slowly taken control of the entire southern part of Palestine surrounding Jerusalem. I cannot approve of the way the Arab folks have gone about making their case for equal freedom, but it remains true that the Israeli people have behaved very badly toward the Palestinians. And, Gaza remains at the center of the struggle for this “Holy Land.”